The Employment of Empirical Data and Bayesian Methods in Human Reliability Analysis: A Feasibility Study (NUREG/CR-6949)

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Publication Information

Manuscript Completed: September 2007
Date Published: December 2007

Edited by:
B. Hallbert, INL
A. Kolaczkowski, SAIC

Idaho National Laboratory
Idaho Falls, ID 83415

Science Applications International Corporation
10260 Campus Point Drive
San Diego, CA 92121

E. Lois, NRC Project Manager

Prepared for:
Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Washington, DC 20555-0001

NRC Job Code Y6496

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Abstract

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is addressing issues related to the quality of Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA), including issues related to human reliability analysis (HRA) performed as part of PRA. Among the issues of concern is an inadequate use of human performance data in the estimation of human error probabilities (HEPs), as well as in testing or otherwise validating underlying models used in HRA to predict human performance under cognitively demanding conditions. In order to address issues related to the use of human performance data in HRA, the NRC is developing the Human Event Repository and Analysis (HERA) database (NUREG/CR-6903). In addition, in August 2005, the NRC hosted an expert workshop on the use of Bayesian and other quantitative formalisms in conjunction with empirical data, such as that available in HERA, to improve both the estimation of human error probabilities and the underlying assumptions and quantitative algorithms employed by different HRA methods.

This report contains a collection of papers that were produced as a result of the workshop. It also summarizes the peer review comments of a draft version of this report, includes conclusions about the feasibility of using empirical data and quantitative methods for HRA, and provides suggestions on how to proceed to address the issues under consideration.

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